We headed off about 0900 this morning after coffee and breakfast…our destination for the day was Fundy National Park which is about 37 kilometers or about 22 miles south. We started with 3 destinations in mind but then added a couple of others.

In addition…we expect to see Roy and Ann Brody again this afternoon…they’ll be here through Sunday or Monday whereas we’re leaving Saturday morning…they’re headed down into Nova Scotia to Yarmouth at the far end while we head further northeast to Sydney to catch the ferry over to Newfoundland next week.

First up was a visit to the very southern end of the park…well, it’s not actually the southern end but it’s as far as you can go on a paved road…to see the Wolfe Creek covered bridge. This is a new covered bridge built in 1992 in the same style and construction techniques (mostly) that old 1700s and 1800s covered bridges used…the key difference being that rather than being limited to about 3.2 meters vertical clearance and 4 tons weight capacity as the 45 Bridge I’ll talk about in a bit…it’s got a vertical clearance of 4.5 meters and is rated for 23 tons…the primary reasons for these increased dimensions being that the Wolfe Point RV Campground is on the far side of the river and they needed a bridge that could handle RV traffic.

On the way to Wolfe Point…we passed by a sign to Herring Cove…so after visiting the bridge we stopped by there. Neil hiked down the 150 odd stair steps to the beach while Connie stayed up top…our original plan was to maybe eat lunch there but the bugs were fierce. They’re not biting bugs…at least not so we noticed…but they buzz ‘round your face and are really, really annoying…so we headed off for an overlook just inside the park east entrance up on top of a ridge overlooking the Bay of Fundy and ate there instead.

Before eating…we stopped by Dickson Falls…located on Dickson Brook naturally. We had a pretty nice little loop hike of almost a mile…with a very nice waterfall and a couple of minor falls downstream from Dickson Falls proper.

After eating…we headed north for Ponderosa Pines…but took a planned short side trip to the 45 Bridge. Seems like the Canucks have the same really logical naming system that the Mainers do. There’s this covered bridge that we headed off to see…it’s named the 45 Bridge. Why? Naturally it’s because it passes over the 45 River…and you take 45 Road to get there. Now why it’s named 45 I have no idea and a quick google didn’t reveal anything useful…but that’s it’s name and the bridge and road name obviously flow from there.

First up…I gotta show you the lengths that we’ll go to to get great images for you…our devoted and loyal readers…to see and enjoy. Here are a couple of shots we took along the aforementioned 45 Road on the way to the bridge.

How far will we go…all the way to the Black Hole I tellya.

We had to drive about 5.7 kilometers down that gravel road to get to the bridge…and the photo shows one of the good parts…although it was relatively smooth for a gravel road that piece is about a 20 percent grade. We were up and down…dodging ‘round the potholes…picking our way across washed out drainage culverts…but Little Red handled it like a champ and we made our way out and back in.

Looking southward toward the Bay just downstream of the Wolfe Creek Bridge.

And looking the other way here’s a view of part of the bridge.

As we departed the area we looked back and got this shot…the two above were taken from the right hand side of the bridge just on the other side of the concrete pier.

Herring Cove beach.

And a shot Connie got from up on the bluff.

Closeups of some of the flowers on the trees there.

Next stop was the hike at Dickson Falls…the first few of these are not the main falls but the minor drops downstream from the main fall…

And finally…Dickson Falls itself…it’s about 30 or 40 feet for the top drop and then another 12 or 14 for the cascade lower portion…all of the minor drops above are within a couple of hundred yards downstream from the main fall but there’s enough separation so that they’re not considered part of Dickson.

An usie of the adults on the boardwalk near the main drop of the fall.

This was about the only wildlife we saw today…some sort of slug thing about 2 inches long.

Final destination of the day was 45 Bridge.

A shot of the interior support structure of the bridge. Ever wonder why covered bridges are…well, covered? It’s not for any structural purpose but rather to protect the deck and structural members of the bridge from rain, ice, and snow…any of that will cause premature deterioration of the bridge structure and shorten it’s useful life. To prevent this…they were designed with side walls and shingled roofs to keep the rain off of them.

There was a nice little waterfall directly under the bridge…we could hear it but finding it to take a photo was mostly impossible…we did get a few shots of small portions but the only way to see any significant portion was to hang out the window on the side of the bridge and look straight down…don’t worry…Neil was holding on with one hand and Connie had ahold of his belt as well while he got these.

Then it was off to lunch at the overlook…the park has a couple of Adirondack chairs up on top…they were occupied with other lunchers and it was sprinkling a bit so we ate in the car but once they left we got a couple of shots of us lounging in them.

And a couple of shots looking southwards toward the Bay.

With that our day was done and we headed for the barn…and looking at the weather forecast we switched our activities for Thursday and Friday…deciding to do the nails/haircut/grocery run on Thursday during the rain and go down to the Mary’s Point, the Cape Enrage Lighthouse and a bonus Anderson Hollow Lighthouse on Friday followed by dinner with Roy and Ann.

It rained all day Thursday…hard…it was a bit of a challenge driving up to Moncton for our errands as the road markings here in our northern neighbor are poor at best and pretty much impossible to see when it’s raining…but we got them all done and brought home a tandoori roasted chicken from Walmart for dinner along with a couple of baked potatoes that Neil cooked for us.

Friday we headed off to Mary’s Point…we passed on the bird sanctuary and walk on the ocean floor thing and stopped by for a quick look at the Anderson Hollow Lighthouse…which has been moved several times and now sits on a dam at some sort of abandoned tourist attraction.

Anderson Hollow Light

Cape Enrage Lighthouse. As you can see…it’s almost identical in design to Anderson Hollow…and to almost all of the lighthouses we’ve seen along the coast up here. Seems the Canucks have more of a bent towards uniformity as compared to lighthouses in the US…we deliberately build them with different designs and paint schemes to ensure that even if you see the light in the daytime you can easily identify it. Back in sailing ship days with less than GPS accuracy for their navigation…being able to visually identify a light during the day was a big deal because (a) it told you where you really were and (b) by knowing that you could avoid the shoal waters that lights frequently are placed to help shipping avoid. Seems like a different idea up here…as a former mariner the US philosophy makes more sense. Cape Enrage lighthouse is still operated by the Coast Guard…although it’s unmanned now. The property is owned (except for the light) by a couple who have built a gift shop, restaurant, and charge an admission fee to get into the grounds to see the light and the fossil beach just at the bottom of the bluff past the light.

Close up of the light section…it doesn’t have a Fresnel lens like most lights do so it’s not visible as far…based on it’s height it should be visible at about twice it’s actual visibility distance.

The foghorn at the light…a nearby sign says it might go off anytime if it’s foggy…and if it does it will damage your hearing…must be mighty darned loud. The couple that runs the place and their 20 odd summer workers that run a zip line on the property must have a real hard time trying to sleep if the weather is bad.

Another couple of shots of the light that Connie took.

Looking back from the light towards the dorm for the summer help…if she had been any farther back she would have fallen over the railing and down the bluff.

We came home and then headed back out with Roy and Ann to the restaurant at the local dude ranch…horses and all. Dinner was good but not great…but it was only 8 miles away instead of 30 so that covers a lot of sins I guess…Connie had salmon and it was great…Neil had shrimp carbonara that was decent.

After we got back Neil went out and got another couple of sunset shots.

Saturday we were up early for our 330ish mile transit to the Sydney NS area…where we quickly got setup in an un-numbered site at Arm of Gold Campground just about 5 miles from the ferry landing in North Sydney where we’ll be embarking Wednesday morning for our transit to Newfoundland. There were about 1 or 15 Airstream travel trailers lined up in a row here when we pulled in…but they were all gone the next morning so they were obviously an Airstream only caravan…our guess is that they got on the ferry this mooning.